Cambridge Aerospace has announced a $300m Series C funding round at a $3.4bn valuation, led by DFJ Growth and supported by Lux, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global, and Elad Gil & Co. The funds will go towards expanding manufacturing capacity, fulfilling existing contracts, and continuing development of the company’s current and next-generation products.
The raise comes just four months after the company’s $200m Series B, co-led by Elad Gil & Co and Spark Capital, which valued Cambridge Aerospace at $1.3bn. That rapid step-up in valuation, from $1.3bn to $3.4bn in a single round, reflects the pace at which the company has been converting investment into contracted revenue with the UK Ministry of Defence.
The Cambridge Aerospace facility in Cambridge, UK
From start-up to MoD supplier in under two years
Cambridge Aerospace was founded less than two years ago, built around the combined backgrounds of CEO Professor Steven Barrett, a leading aerospace engineer, CCO Chris Sylvan, a Royal Marines veteran turned defence technology executive, and co-founder Junaid Hussain, a serial technology entrepreneur. That mix of engineering depth, operational understanding, and commercial experience has driven unusually fast product development for the defence sector.
The company’s first product, Skyhammer, is a low-cost interceptor designed to defeat the kind of inexpensive attack drones that have become a defining feature of modern conflict. It sits within the MoD’s Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms (LEAP) programme, announced in July, which seeks to field affordable counter-UAS capabilities at scale. An initial contract to provide low-cost interceptors for UK Armed Forces was announced by the Defence Secretary at the London Defence Conference earlier this year.
Its next product, Starhammer, is targeted for market in 2027.
The counter-UAS imperative
The investment attraction here isn’t difficult to follow. The proliferation of low-cost attack drones, most visibly in Ukraine but increasingly relevant across theatres, has exposed a fundamental asymmetry: cheap offensive drones are being intercepted by expensive missiles, burning through stockpiles and budgets at an unsustainable rate. The LEAP programme is the MoD’s direct response to that problem, and Cambridge Aerospace is one of the companies being backed to solve it.
DFJ Growth Founder and Managing Partner Randy Glein described the case plainly: “They have developed an affordable and accurate counter UAS system for eliminating the inbound threats and battlefield chaos caused by low-cost aerial attack drones.”
Cambridge Aerospace Skyhammer in flight
Scale and workforce
Cambridge Aerospace now employs over 250 people, with two-thirds in technical and engineering roles. The company has a presence beyond the UK in Germany, Poland, Norway, Ukraine, and Australia, positioning itself as an Allied rather than purely British capability provider.
The new funding will support continued headcount growth alongside the manufacturing scale-up required to meet contracted deliveries. CEO Steven Barrett said the raise would “allow us to continue to scale our manufacturing and our delivery to meet the pace of threats, and the needs of Allied nations.”
A unicorn scheme success story
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting MP cited Cambridge Aerospace as evidence the government’s unicorn scheme is working as intended, supporting British defence start-ups to scale into billion-pound companies. At a $3.4bn valuation, Cambridge Aerospace now sits well above unicorn status, and it has done so while building real product and real contracts rather than simply accumulating paper value.
The speed of the company’s growth remains the most striking aspect of the story. Whether the manufacturing and delivery capacity can keep pace with that growth, and with the expectations that come with a $3.4bn valuation, is the next question to watch.
Images © Cambridge Aerospace
